Shared understanding

Different types of teams need to share an understanding of different things.

Project teams

The team has a common understanding of why they're here, the problem/need, are convinced about the idea, confident they have what they need, and trust each other.

Velocity

Velocity means different things to different types of teams.

Project teams

The team is making incremental progress by shipping concrete iterations to stakeholders (and even better to production), learning along the way, and implementing lessons learned, resulting in greater success.

AND I NEED THIS... WHY?

So you've been asked to lead a super complex, mission-critical technology project for your company. This is the one keeping your CEO awake at night, and probably involves one or more of the following:

integration of a platform or shared component across multiple products

collaboration across multiple teams or departments (some who haven't worked together previously)

significant technical risk

lots of dependencies between different teams

teams in multiple timezones

an aggressive timeline

intense scrutiny by senior stakeholders

Congratulations on being trusted with such a large scale, high-visibility project. You're in rare territory here – only the brave dare enter, and only the slightly crazy come out alive. This calls for a play with a twist!

WHO SHOULD BE INVOLVED?

As the project manager, read through this play independently and then re-tool your project plans with a focus on the stuff that really matters.

Then walk through it with your project sponsor and stakeholders (so they know you're in it to win it).

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People

1

Time

60 min

Difficulty

Hard

Running the play

Carve out an hour and get ready to step beyond standard project management, embrace the challenge, and get ready to crush it!

MATERIALS

Your existing plans

Red pen

Optimism

PRINCIPLE 1

Conscious collaboration

Plan in the same room – Every team on the project should be part of the planning process, and literally be there in the room. The travel costs are a drop in the ocean compared with the cost of building the wrong thing.

Agree on the rules of engagement up front – Answer questions like "Will platform teams do the integration work?" and "How will we engage teams like marketing, support, and operations?"

Cross-pollinate between teams – Secondments, rotations, embedded teams, or even combined teams are effective ways to reduce risk and Get $#!τ Done. The empathy and trust they build doesn't hurt, either.

Plan for roll-out, migration, and/or adoption – Don't lose sight of how you get this project to customers. Share your plans with the team and stakeholders, and keep them up to date. Bonus points for running a roll-out simulation to test and gain confidence.

Assist and reward adoption – There will be problems to flush out and fixes to make. If you're building a platform service, save some bandwidth to help the first product-side teams who adopt it.

Challenge the org chart - Bring teams from across the company together for the life of the project within a dedicated project organization.

This will help you avoid...

Wasting time trying to realign roadmaps and priorities between teams

Shoehorning in additional teams after plans are made

Unproductive meetings

Painfully protracted decision making

Doubts about whether the platform will actually work

You know it's working when...

Teams trust each other

Teams' goals and roadmaps align

Engagement models and resourcing plans between teams are clearly understood

PRINCIPLE 2

Shared understanding

Clarify the "why" and "what" – Set goals collectively as a team of teams so you're all aligned. Where possible, platform teams should propose initiatives in terms of business value so they can be prioritized easily against product initiatives.

Make scope and progress visible – Share your roadmap and keep it up to date. Pro-actively let your team know about changes to scope and/or timelines (there'll be plenty!).

PRINCIPLE 3

Clear ownership

The "administrative" stuff – Assign a full-time owner for the project (if you're reading this, it's probably you!). Have your executive sponsor promote the project internally, and be on call to unblock when bottlenecks pop up.

The technical stuff – Include a cross-product architect in your project team so they can look after high-level design and implementation concerns. Agree on who owns the overall customer experience (e.g., platform, or product?), as well as who owns each major deliverable.

Map it out – Run the Roles and Responsibilities play with the entire project team (or representatives from each sub-team). Bonus points for running it within each sub-team, too.

Full-time owner

Project teams

There is one lead who is accountable for the result of this project. This needs to be someone whose time is at least 80% dedicated to it, and who can champion the mission inside and outside of the team.

This will help you avoid...

Team members treading on each other's toes

Generally creating bottlenecks

Work falling through the cracks

Bloodthirsty sponsors who didn't get an update about changes to scope or timing

You know it's working when...

Decisions are made quickly

Stakeholders know who to contact with questions

The full-time owner communicates updates each week

Deliverables are shipped on time

PRINCIPLE 4

Trust

Recruit in the right people – Gather your best communicators, integrators, those that quickly build trust & have a positive attitude. You need folks with a high degree of attention to detail and urgency.

Swap trade secrets – Encourage the platform teams to draw on the product teams' wealth of knowledge about your customers. And bring the product teams up to speed on platform work through brown-bag presos, internal blogs, lunch dates, etc.

Build momentum – Go for a shared quick win early on to boost morale and cement the teams' trust in each other. And don't forget to run Health Monitor sessions every month!

This will help you avoid...

Frequent roadblocks and broken promises

Uninspired problem-solving

Low morale

You know it's working when...

Teams enjoy working with each other

Milestones are celebrated and communicated jointly

Interpersonal or collaboration issues are discussed openly and resolved quickly

PRINCIPLE 5

Shared milestones

Track your progress – Share your project timeline and use it as your single source of truth. Keep it updated to reflect reality, even if this means weekly adjustments. Which it will.

Ship (and celebrate) in small increments – Recruit members of the project team to act as cheerleaders who help keep velocity and morale high.

Collectively own quality – Build integration and testing time into the plan, and make sure your "definition of done" is agreed upon and documented.

This will help you avoid...

Surprises during testing

Slow (or no) progress

Misaligned deliverables and delivery dates

You know it's working when...

Stakeholders are delighted by your steady progress

Customers start reaping the benefits well before the project is complete

You're getting value out of the platform faster than expected, and with little overhead

PRINCIPLE 6

Effective decisions

Be thoughtful – Take both long and short-term implications into account. Carefully consider who should make the call. Don't just assume the full-time owner or exec sponsor is best suited.

Optimize for efficiency – Run the Trade-off Sliders play so individuals and teams are empowered to make every-day decisions autonomously. For major decisions, use the DACI framework.

Organize and communicate – Set up a decision register to keep track of what's being (or has been) decided, and refer to it in your weekly project communications.

This will help you avoid...

Teams becoming more uncertain with every decision they make as there's too much information lying "below the waterline"

Considering a solution or timeframe based on outdated or incorrect information

You revise and recount the same decision numerous times

You know it's working when...

Decisions are made quickly

Different views are heard before accepting a single decision

Decisions aren't being reopened or disputed

PRINCIPLE 7

Manage dependencies

Anticipate bottlenecks – Make a table or diagram that maps out who your team relies on, and who relies on your team.

Keep tabs on it – Assign one owner from each side who looks after each dependency. Make sure the dependency owners understand and communicate the impact of changes to all upstream and downstream teams.

This will help you avoid...

Downstream delays and missed milestones

Frustration, flailing, and general hand-wringing

You know it's working when...

You have a concise, comprehensive, self-serve way to keep track of dependencies

Make the most of project meetings – Include a 10-minute demo or problem-solving session in your weekly meetings to keep the room engaged.

Sync 1-on-1 – Meet weekly or biweekly with the team lead and product manager of each work stream to check progress against your schedule, identify any schedule changes, discuss new risks or issues, and talk about team morale.

Be easy to find – Establish a HipChat room or Confluence page as your forum for Q&A and/or escalating problems.

Celebrate even the small wins – They snowball into big wins faster than you'd think!